


The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

by Hexmage



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen, if no one will give this man character development i will!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23989759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexmage/pseuds/Hexmage
Summary: Surely being the Defender of Tomorrow is an easy enough gig. What with the adoring fans, good press, and the fame...Old lore.
Kudos: 7





	The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

**Author's Note:**

> Yes the title is from that meme. No it does not make this less sort of serious.  
> I've been fleshing out Jayce more recently as I plot out the future of Cognitive Dissonance, and so this happened at like 10 at night yesterday. I'd like to think of it as a character study of a Jayce that's less sure-footed than the one I've painted in Cognitive Dissonance so far... or maybe just a part of that Jayce he doesn't wish to acknowledge.

Jayce read a lot of superhero comics growing up. It wasn’t a habit out of the ordinary, really – every young boy born during the slow thaw of the last Rune War’s tail-end had gotten into the new media. Reading about mages that could destroy a city with a snap of their fingers, but instead chose to protect the weak against their ensemble cast of villains… it gave hope in an uncertain, worried time.

The media was even more popular nowadays, really. The characters Jayce had grown to know as a child had taken on new sidekicks, gotten new villains, and some had even gotten something that looked an awful lot like a non-serialized and multi-issue writing arc. They were just as beloved – for every child pretending to be a Champion, another pretended to be the Silver Specter or one of his many compatriots. The two were more alike than different, truthfully, especially considering how Jayce was seen by young Piltovians.

* * *

Jayce was a capital-H Hero in the eyes of Piltover’s youth, fighting back against the villainous Viktor and his dastardly plots to… well, it didn’t particularly matter much _what_ his plots were to most. He was a Zaunite, first off, and that put him in direct competition with Piltover. Jayce had been told time and time again by people young and old that their rivalry was a microcosm of the one between the two city-states. He’d given up on explaining that it _wasn’t_ a rivalry after the tenth such comment. They were opposed, yes, but he knew well enough that Viktor was aware of him in the way that an animal was aware of a tick – he knew he existed, he knew that he was a hazard, but he didn’t care about him in comparison to most other things. Viktor had started Jayce on his path to becoming the Defender of Tomorrow. Jayce had only detoured Viktor’s maniacal dream of becoming a machine.

He’d detour it until he couldn’t anymore, of course. Humans were supposed to _embrace_ their humanity, not replace it with cold steel. What he’d seen in Viktor’s laboratory had no right to be out in the world… So he’d fight for humanity’s sake until his last breath.

* * *

He did other things, of course. Used his knowledge to stop malfunctioning robots, helped out in emergency situations (fire had never scared him, and after the searing pain of Viktor’s laser both on and off the Fields it was tame in comparison), assisted Caitlyn and her police force with the few criminals left in the city… He wasn’t a one-trick pony! And there were the social engagements, of course. Fans and admirers, which he made a habit to smile warmly and speak politely to, and then those who spent their time socializing in Piltover’s upper echelons. The people who would shake his hand for _just_ a moment too long, the older men who would introduce their stunning daughters, the young women who were far too friendly for a first meeting… he wasn’t stupid. He knew why they cared for him – it wasn’t for his engineering knowledge, or his achievements, or even his personality. It was because he was the Hero. He had a certain image (one that was certainly helped by his appearance and nature), and the prestige that came along with it was what they were all chasing. Enough “dates” with those aforementioned women had taught him that. It was all for status. To be seen with someone important. The Hero, not just Jayce.

Never just Jayce.

* * *

So maybe he was a little nostalgic for and jealous of the superhero comics of his youth. Where everything was so simple. Those heroes never were asked to speak publicly, to smile for the camera, to talk to people who were only interested in their titles and not them. They wore masks and fought crime under pseudonyms. Sure, they had their tragic backstories – a dead relative, a childhood horror – but those were influences on their character that only they knew. No one would suspect that the Silver Specter’s daytime identity was that of a young photographer, his desire to stop crime spurred on by losing a dear friend to violence. _He_ could keep his lives separate.

Jayce hadn’t expected to be hailed as a hero for doing what was right. He had thought he’d die, maybe, when he and Viktor had started to fight. He’d never intended to shatter the crystal he’d come to rescue, but he’d seen one last laser blast aimed at him and _known_ deep in his heart that if he let Viktor keep that power source that he wouldn’t be the only one suffering. So he’d struck, and the laboratory had burst into flames as countless shards exploded outward in a ball of needle-like shrapnel. Viktor had rushed to rescue what he could, and Jayce… Jayce had limped away, making it back to Piltover. But people had seen, and the news had spread, and soon enough his face was splashed across the daily newspaper as a foolhardy vigilante. Then Zaun hadn’t retaliated for his attack and he was a hero, someone to lionize and look up to.

He wishes, sometimes, that he’d thought to wear a mask.

* * *

But he can’t go back to his previous life now, the life that he’d expected for himself. The one where he’d work as an engineer, find a nice woman to settle down with, have a few kids… find a purpose in it all that made him feel valued for being _him_. The nice, normal, average life.

He was the Hero, and everyone knew damn well that superheroes didn’t get boring lives.


End file.
